Delegation is about letting employees make decisions and work on their own initiative. To be successful, employees must have the resources to complete a delegated task. This may mean providing training, tools and support.

Managers can delegate authority however they cannot delegate responsibility, this is important. Although an employee is responsible for meeting deadlines, goals and objectives, the Manager is still ultimately responsible for the success of the delegated task.

DELEGATION BENEFITS

• Employees may do a better job when they feel personally accountable, even though responsibility ultimately rests with the individual who made the delegation.
• Delegation can make an employee’s work more varied and therefore motivate the employee.
• Managers have more time to innovate and plan.
• When delegation involves training and mentoring, the organisation will benefit from a more highly skilled workforce.
• Employees will learn to be better decision makers given more responsibility.

DELEGATION DRAWBACKS

• Managers may lack the knowledge or motivation to delegate.
• Managers may choose the wrong tasks to delegate.
• Managers may not communicate the task effectively, providing inadequate direction.
• Some managers get stuck in the belief that “if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.”
• Managers may:
  • Lack trust in their employees
  • Fear being seen as lazy
  • Be reluctant to take risks
  • Fear competition

Any of the above may result in incomplete or incorrectly completed tasks.

The manager is ultimately responsible for delegation and must take responsibility for:

• Delegating the wrong task
• Delegating to the wrong person
• Not providing proper guidance.

The employee is ultimately responsible for:

• Doing the task incorrectly when given adequate resources, guidance or training.

See our Delegation Skills training course if you are looking to improve the way you delegate.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills Training on January 16th, 2008 | No Comments »

The manager’s role is to organise resources and employees to achieve the best results for an organisation. How a manager perceives his employees will  affect his skill at motivating staff. Consider these two approaches below.

The pessimistic manager
The pessimistic manager may assume the following about most employees:

• People do not enjoy work; they will try and avoid it if possible
• People are not ambitious
• People do not like responsibility
• People prefer to be told what to do
• Most people are not creative when solving problems
• People are only motivated by basic needs for security
• The majority of people are self-centered, and so will need to be controlled in order to work towards organisational goals and objectives
• People are resistant to change
• Most people are not intelligent.
• People are gullible

This attitude towards management and employees assumes that people at work are motivated firstly by money closely followed by basic security needs.

In order to control employees the pessimistic management may rely on coercion, threats and tight control command. The pessimistic manager could be passive and simply hope for cooperation. Neither of these solutions are productive styles of management. The first will result in hostility, employees may purposely under perform, and workers may unite in opposition to management. The second approach does not motivate at all, it may encourage apathy.

The pessamistic approach assumes that once a need is satisfied it no longer motivates hindering the need to satisfy higher-level needs. More money becomes the only form of motivation. Employees will use work to satisfy this basic need only; their higher needs (see McLelland: Motivational Drives) will have to be fulfilled elsewhere. As we will see later – employees can be most productive when their work goals align with  higher level needs.

Pessimism in management that recognises only basic needs for motivation usually encourage employees to work without responsibility, enthusiasm or creativity,  promoting an environment where employees dislike their work, avoid responsibility, have no interest in organisational goals, resist change, etc., thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Optimistic Manager

Maslow’s Hierarchy looks at mans basic needs for survival food, shelter etc. in a working environment money is the only currency that will satify these needs. Managers should also be interested in higher-level needs (see McLelland: Motivational Drives), needs that are continuing needs as in seldom completely satisfied, such as self esteem and self actualisation. As these needs are on going and not so easily attained, the promise of more can more easily be used to motivate and reward employees.

The pessimistic manager may assume the following about most employees:

• Work can be fun/rewarding/enjoyable
• If employees are committed they can be self directed and creative when working towards organisational goals
• If rewards can fulfil higher needs such as self fulfilment, employees will be more committed to maintaining quality and productivity
• Enthusiasm, commitment and creativity can spread
• Most people can handle responsibility
• In the right conditions people will seek responsibility

Here there is an opportunity to align organisational goals with personal goals by using higher needs such as self fulfillment as a motivator.

There may be employees that are not as responsive when offered the promise of higher need fulfillment. There may be employees that will still need a level of control to make them productive. They may however develop as they work in an environment that encourages responsibility and creativity and control can be relaxed as employees develop.

Silicon Beach Training offer a Staff Motivation course.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills Training on June 3rd, 2008 | Comments Off